Episode 38: You'll Never Be Satisfied

"You're like me, I'm never satisfied/is that right?/I have never been satisfied." 

                                        -Cast of Hamilton, "Satisfied"

  Sometimes I don't like being part of the comic book/superhero fandom. It's nothing against the creators of the content, and definitely nothing against the content itself. It's against other people who enjoy the content. Whether it's men who think women aren't allowed to enjoy superheroes, or women on the outside who think it's just a man's thing.

   But I'm not going to talk about the gender politics of the comic book industry. Perhaps that'll be a future episode. For this one, I wanna talk about the scandal that is satisfaction among those who like superheroes.

Case 1: Casting.

   It's a very wash-rinse-repeat cycle. I've seen it all the time. When an actor is announced to be playing a certain comic character, people will explode and jump to conclusions, saying with no real evidence that their performance will be terrible. People doubted Heath Ledger as the Joker, and that turned out to be one of the greatest portrayals of a villain in cinematic history. People doubted Robert Pattinson as Batman (making a litany of Edward jokes) yet he turned out to be amazing in the role. People even doubted Ben Affleck in the same role but he turned out to be a pretty good Batman as well. 

    Don't judge a performance before you've seen it. Don't judge a performance you haven't seen it based on other performances of the same actor. Just because Robert Pattinson played a sparkly "vampire" in Twilight doesn't mean he's not a great Batman. Let's not forget that Christian Bale, the man who's pretty much universally recognized as the best live-action Batman, went on to play Dick Cheney. Sir Patrick Stewart, the great Professor Charles Xavier, voiced a poop emoji in the disaster that was The Emoji Movie. The point is, actors play different roles. Their job is based around their ability to pretend to be different kinds of people. You can't judge everything as one thing.

Case 2: Daredevil: The Disney Problem (?)

   From 2015-2018, Marvel had a show on Netflix centered around hero Daredevil. It was universally acclaimed, and ran for three seasons, only to be canceled along with all its sister shows. There was massive uproar with its cancelation, with fans begging for years for it to be brought back. The problem was, Netflix still owned the rights to the characters, so Disney/Marvel couldn't do anything with them outside of comics. They got the rights back in 2020, and sure enough, the characters have already started trickling back in. Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk/Kingpin was featured in the Hawkeye series, which was soon followed by Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock himself camoeing in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

    These were soon followed by the announcement at Comic-Con of a new series coming in 2024. It will have an 18-episode first season and will be called Daredevil: Born Again. Cox and D'Onofrio are both confirmed to be reprising their roles. It will be one of Marvel's many Disney+ original shows. Before that, we will also see Daredevil in the She-Hulk series, the Echo series, and in the animated Spider-Man prequel show Spider-Man: Freshman Year. That's a whole lot of Daredevil we're getting.

   So, surely all Daredevil fans are happy, right? No. Many are not. Why though? If you're getting so much Daredevil content, why aren't you happy?

   People are nervous because Daredevil is now in the hands of Disney, and they are afraid of the prospect of a "Disneyified" Daredevil. See, Daredevil in the show and in many of the comics is a dark and violent character. He is street-level, which means he deals with a lot of drug dealers, gangs, pedophiles, etc. He can fight pretty dirty, and his villains are very evil. Daredevil himself has severe depression. 

    People are afraid that Disney is going to take Daredevil and get rid of all the darkness and grittiness to make him more family-friendly. But to that point, I argue that Daredevil does not have to be strictly r-rated. If you would actually read some Daredevil comics, you would see that they're not all that dark. Some of them are, yes, but others aren't. 

   People are also afraid that Disney+ won't allow violence and gore. This is a stupid point because this has already been proven wrong multiple times. Moon Knight had multiple bloody deaths, and The Mandalorian has a scene where the main character slowly and methodically murders a group of bad guys one by one. Not to mention the fact that both Deadpool movies and Logan are streaming on Disney+. And they're not censored. They still have all their gore and language and boobs (in Deadpool's case), on full and open display.

   Not to mention the fact that Disney+ is now airing the original Daredevil show in full as well as all its sister shows, which includes the even more violent and even darker The Punisher. So there is really no reason whatsoever to be worried about Daredevil being in Disney's hands.

    A while ago, I had an argument with a guy on Facebook who was asserting that "woke Disney" would not keep Daredevil's religious beliefs. If you're reading this and don't know, Daredevil is a very devout Catholic. It's an integral part of his character. One of his strongest friendships is the one he has with his priest.

   I told the man that they won't take Daredevil's faith away because it's such an integral part of him. You can't have Daredevil without his Catholicism just as much as you can't have Batman without his wealth. And plus, now we know that the show is called "Born Again". That alone suggests his faith will still be relevant as "born again" itself is a Christian phrase.

    So, some people aren't satisfied with so much Daredevil just because it's going to be made by Disney. So, surely they'd be satisfied if all this Daredevil stuff was made by a different studio, right? WRONG! I think they'd still be complaining. Daredevil: Born Again would come out and they'd whine that it's too much like the original and they just stole from that show instead of trying to make their own unique version of Daredevil.

    Anyway, if you're going to complain, make sure you at least have valid reason to complain.

See you next week!